A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

Seville, as the chief commercial centre of Spain, naturally attracted many merchants and mariners, and this auto furnishes an illustration of inquisitorial methods in discouraging commerce. Among the relaxed there were three foreigners—a Frenchman named Bartolomé Fabreo and two Englishmen, William Bruq (Brooks) and Nicolas Bertoun (Burton or Britton). Of the two former we know only their fate, but of the latter we chance to have some details. Burton was a shipmaster or supercargo, who made no secret of the reformed faith in which he had been trained, wherefore he was arrested and all the merchandize in his charge was sequestrated. One of the owners, seeking to recover his property, sent a young man named John Frampton to reclaim it. After months of delay he was told that his papers were insufficient, when he went back to London and returned to Seville with what was needed. More delays ensued and then he was cast into the secret prison on the charge that a suspicious book had been found in his baggage—the book being an English translation of Cato. His trial was protracted, though he made no secret of his belief; he was tortured until he fainted and, when his endurance was exhausted, he consented to adopt Catholicism. Burton was more persistent and was burnt. Frampton, after fourteen months of confinement, escaped with reconciliation, confiscation and a year of sanbenito and prison, with orders never to leave Spain. All the goods under Burton’s charge were confiscated; Frampton figured his own loss at £760 and the whole confiscations at the auto at the enormous sum of £50,000—doubtless an exaggeration, but the whole affair indicates that the profitable side of persecution was not lost to sight.[1184]

The next auto was celebrated April 26, 1562, and comprised forty-nine cases of Lutheranism. There were nine relaxed in person and, as none of them are described as obstinate, it may be assumed that all were garrotted. There was one effigy of the dead and fifteen of fugitives. Of the latter, nine were monks of San Isidro, among whom were Cipriano de Valera and Cassiodoro de Reina. That the native stock of heretics was becoming exhausted is seen in the fact that, of the thirty-three persons figuring in the auto, twenty-one were foreigners, mostly Frenchmen. This was followed by another auto, October 28th of the same year, in which there were thirty-nine cases of Lutheranism, of which nine were relaxations in person and three of fugitives in effigy, none of the culprits being described as impenitent. There were nine reconciliations, seventeen abjurations de vehementi and one de levi. The number of ecclesiastics is a noteworthy feature of this auto for, besides the Prior of San Isidro, Maestro Garcí Arias Blanco, there were four priests burnt in person and one in effigy, and seven who abjured de vehementi. They contributed largely to the fines levied, amounting to 5050 ducats and 50,000 maravedís, besides four confiscations of half the property. It may be remarked, moreover, that the officers and crew of the ship Angel seem to have fallen victims in a body, for three were burnt, six were reconciled and four abjured de vehementi.[1185] Trading with Spain was becoming more and more perilous.

The little band of Seville Protestants was thus almost rooted out, and the succeeding autos show a constantly preponderating number of foreigners. That of April 19, 1564, only presented six relaxations in person and one in effigy, of which all the former were of Flemings, and two abjurations de vehementi, both of foreigners.[1186] The next was celebrated May 13, 1565, in which there were six relaxations in effigy for Protestantism, the offenders having fled. Of these only two were Spaniards, one being the last inculpated monk of San Isidro. Of seven reconciliations, all were of foreigners, six being Flemish or Breton sailors. Of five abjurations de vehementi, three were of Flemings. There was also a cruel warning against harboring and protecting these foreign heretics, for two Flemings of Puerto Real, for this offence, were visited, one with four hundred lashes and the other with two hundred, besides fines and banishment.[1187]

We have thus virtually reached the end of native Spanish Protestantism, but the impression produced by the Valladolid and Seville heretics was still profound. Philip II addressed, November 23, 1563, to the Spanish bishops, a letter enlarging upon the efforts of the Lutherans to spread their doctrines throughout Spain. In these perilous times, he says, the Inquisition must be aided by having everywhere those who will report to it all suspect of Lutheran or other errors. The bishop is to see to this and also that preachers shall confine themselves to setting forth Catholic belief, making no allusions to heresies, even to confute them. Confessors are to be instructed to charge their penitents to denounce to the Inquisition all whom they know to entertain these errors. No one is to be allowed to teach school without a preliminary examination, by both the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, who must be satisfied with his character and habits.[1188] It is evident that extraordinary precautions and universal vigilance were deemed necessary to exclude the obnoxious doctrines.

MISSIONARY EFFORTS

Yet these efforts were rewarded with no new discoveries, for Spanish Protestantism was a mere episode, of no practical moment save as its repression fortified the Inquisition and led to the segregation of Spain from the intellectual and industrial movement of the succeeding centuries. A few sporadic cases may be noted from time to time, but the persecution of Jew and Morisco had trained the nation too thoroughly in enthusiastic fanaticism, and the organization of monarchy and Church was too absolute for there to be any real danger that Protestantism could obtain a foothold. Yet the danger was deemed so pressing that extreme measures were justified to protect the land from the intrusion of foreign ideas. Philip II had lost no time, after his return from Flanders, in issuing the pragmática of November 22, 1559, by which all Spanish youth studying abroad were ordered home within four months, and all Spanish subjects for the future were forbidden to seek foreign lands for study under penalty, for laymen, of confiscation and perpetual exile, and for clerics, of forfeiture of temporalities and loss of citizenship. The only exceptions allowed were the college of Albornoz in Bologna and those of Rome and Naples, for Spaniards residing in Italy and that of Coimbra for the professors there.[1189] It would be difficult to exaggerate the unfortunate influence of this in retarding Spanish development, yet it was but the first of a series of measures which, by isolating Spain, crippled its energies in every direction.

The spectre of active proselytism on the part of Protestants abroad was vigorously conjured up to stimulate vigilance and justify repression. Undoubtedly the refugees in the Rhinelands and Switzerland were earnestly desirous of evangelizing their native land, and they labored industriously to this end, but the difficulties in the way were too great and the reports as to their efforts were systematically exaggerated. Carranza, in his defence, dwelt on his exertions in Flanders to check this traffic, but though he was told of barrels full of a forged letter of Philip II and of a papal bull, at the Frankfort fair for shipment to Spain, and of shops in Medina del Campo and Málaga to which heretic books were sent, the net results of his energy show how little substratum of fact there was in all this.[1190] The career of Julian Hernández proves that men who took their lives in their hands might occasionally bring in a few books, but his fate was not encouraging. If some times a missionary undertook such work his mission was apt to be brief. Hughes Bernat of Grenoble landed at Lequeitio (Biscay) August 10, 1559, on such an errand. On the road to Guadalupe he fell in with a Minim named Fray Pedro, who pretended inclination to Lutheranism and led Bernat to unbosom himself as to his plans and hopes, resulting in his speedy arrest by the tribunal of Toledo, when he boldly confessed as to himself and was tortured to discover his accomplices. He was sentenced to relaxation in the auto of September 25, 1560, and as he is not described as pertinacious, he probably professed conversion when, for some reason, his sentence was not executed.[1191] In the trial of Gilles Tibobil (or Bonneville), at Toledo, in 1564, we hear of Francisco Borgoñon, a French haberdasher who, in his trips from France, brought with him heretic books, but they were for the benefit of a little Huguenot colony in Toledo; the number of such Frenchmen and Flemings in Spain was large and this, rather than projects of evangelization, probably explains the greater part of the smuggling, attempted or performed.[1192]

MISSIONARY EFFORTS

There were constant rumors, however, of propagandism on a larger scale which served to magnify the importance of the Inquisition and to justify interference with commerce. In 1566, Don Francisco de Alava, a Spanish envoy to France, was busy in Montpellier endeavoring to trace the agency by which heretic books were conveyed to Catalonia, where the number of Frenchmen was large,[1193] and, in the same year, Margaret of Parma, from the Netherlands, sent to Philip the absurd statement that thirty thousand of Calvin’s books had been transmitted through Seville, whereupon the Suprema issued vigorous orders for their seizure.[1194] In January, 1572, it announced to all the tribunals that the Princess of Béarn (Jeanne d’Albret) had recently held an assembly of Lutherans, in which it was resolved to send some of their ministers in disguise to Spain as missionaries. The utmost vigilance was enjoined to counteract this effort; all the commissioners were to be warned and prelates be asked to order all priests and preachers to be on the watch.[1195] In June, 1578, it sent letters to a number of tribunals, stating that advices from Valladolid showed that the heretics had printed a New Testament in Spanish, with a Venetian imprint, and were flooding the land with copies, and also that the heretic ministers had correspondents in Spain. Great watchfulness was therefore commanded at all sea-ports and frontier towns, and all persons found in possession of the prohibited volume were to be sent to Madrid for trial. A month later, this scare was renewed on the strength of information from Flanders, but the records of the Toledo tribunal at this period do not indicate that these efforts were rewarded with any captures.[1196]

Whatever proselyting zeal Protestantism may have had passed away with the early years of the seventeenth century. The latest work of the kind of which we hear is that, in 1603, the Prince of Anhalt introduced into Seville a number of copies of the Bible of Cipriano de Valera and, when Catherine, Duchess of Bar, sister of Henry IV, heard of this, she ordered six hundred copies printed and sent a Huguenot gentleman, named Hierosme de Taride, to the Duke of la Force at Pau, to learn how to transmit them to Saragossa, when la Force gave him the names of parties there who could be trusted to handle them, but the death of the duchess in 1604 put an end to the project.[1197] The Thirty Years’ War gave the German Protestants ample occupation at home and, after the Peace of Westphalia, proselytism was out of fashion.